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THEY call her "the Grim" for short and Reba Meagher's
haughtiness during a 14-year parliamentary career was up and
running yesterday as she delivered one last raspberry to Nathan
Rees, the man Labor chose to sweep up the mess she and others left
behind.

Handing out how-to-vote cards in her electorate of Cabramatta on
Saturday, Ms Meagher had an epiphany that NSW politics would be the
better without her. And should she live until 80, say, she'd be
better off by way more than $5 million thanks to her
taxpayer-funded parliamentary superannuation.

Quickly she emailed the news wire service AAP to announce that
she was quitting Cabramatta. Mr Rees was asked about her
disappearing act on Sunday and he said she had left a message.

But scorned by the Premier, Ms Meagher was full of fury
yesterday: "I would like to respond to comments made by Premier
Nathan Rees regarding the way in which I announced my
retirement from the NSW Parliament," she said in another email to
AAP.

"I was surprised today to learn of assertions that I left a
voice-mail message, or any other message, for Mr Rees or his
staff."

With the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, exhorting the NSW Labor
Government to end the infighting, Ms Meagher made herself
unavailable for comment.

But while the Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, weighed in,
calling the Premier "a liar", and others thought him a fool, Mr
Rees preferred to think of himself as a donkey.

"I made a blunder when I said that Reba Meagher had left
me a message. She hadn't - I'd assumed that," Mr Rees said. "That
reminded me of what a schoolteacher used to tell me: 'When you
assume, you make an ass out of you and me.' "

Ms Meagher's decampment is causing all sorts of problems. Staff
at her electorate office have been told to inform constituents she
is "on holidays this week" while Labor heavyweights strong-arm her
into staying until the October 18 byelection that will cost
taxpayers $300,000.

But Ms Meagher has been able to flout political proprieties
since she entered Parliament in 1994 as a 27-year-old after winning
Cabramatta following the murder of the incumbent Labor MP John
Newman.

Her appointment was her reward for capturing the Left-dominated
Young Labor for the NSW Right years ago with Joe Tripodi when they
were lovers. They were responsible for the lion's share of Labor's
gen X and Y recruitment to the dominant faction.

Her last public imbroglio was in August when she and her brand
new boyfriend, the former television reporter turned Iemma spin
doctor Adam Walters, went drinking and home together, leaving her
parliamentary driver all night in the Governor Macquarie Tower
basement with his overtime running.

Spin doctors such as Mr Walters appear not to impress Mr Rees.
The Premier announced yesterday that he had slashed the number of
media staff in his office from 11 to six, although some have been
sent to work with other ministers.

"And there will be more movement on that reduction of media
staff across Government. We will announce that later."

Ms Meagher, the Catholic daughter of a former Herald
printer, Les Meagher, grew up in a fibro house in Caringbah and
went to Endeavour High and Sydney University, where she became
involved with Young Labor, and eventually worked for the Transport
Workers Union.

Ms Meagher made sure she was a favorite among Labor powerbrokers
but she remained hugely unpopular with the electorate. Maybe it was
because she tooled around town in a BMW, or her habit of residing
semi-permanently on the North Shore or in the eastern suburbs while
giving lip-service to living in her electorate.

She bought two apartments in Cabramatta over the years but lived
mainly at Neutral Bay and Coogee, her home during a brief marriage
to Tim Gleason, Kevin Rudd's spin doctor.

Known as the "Member for Coogeematta", she was the only Labor
female MP to drop her vote in western Sydney when Cabramatta voters
slashed her margin by more than 15 per cent in 1999. By last year
she had turned Cabramatta from Labor's safest to third-safest
seat.

She held seven ministries. But her lacklustre performance in
health was so plagued by crisis that people around Parliament
watched her mournful face on the nightly news and dubbed her the
Grim Reba.

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